Recently, Goodwin partner and co-chair of the firm’s Technology Companies & Life Sciences Group Bill Schnoor joined Paulo Melo, co-founder of doDOC and a Global EIR recipient; in a video promoting the Global Entrepreneur-in-Residence Program.
Global EIR launched in 2014 to retain foreign graduates of local Boston universities who are launching companies, and counts the State of Massachusetts, Silicon Valley Bank and Goodwin as major sponsors.
The program assists entrepreneurs who want to move to or remain in Boston after they graduate to grow a high potential company by granting entrepreneurs a cap-exempt H-1B visa. To date, 25 entrepreneurs from MIT, Harvard, UMass, Columbia, Carnegie Mellon and Stanford have received cap-exempt H-1B visas.
The UMass Venture Development Center is leading the pilot program and has released the following stats on how it is working. Over the past two years: 67 entrepreneurs applied; 23 were accepted and received H-1B visas. The entrepreneurs’ companies have raised a total of $185,512,265 in private investment, and have a headcount of 416 employees. It provides the first concrete evidence of how a national startup visa is expected to benefit the country.